Thursday, 29 January 2015

A Wedding and a Signpost.

Sunday,
25th January, 2015.

Gospel
reading: John 2:1-11

I love the
passages we read in the four Sundays of Epiphany.

The Jews believed
that the place where heaven and earth intersect with each other was the temple
but in these Epiphany passages, Jesus’ glory is revealed outside the
temple - and, even more
startling, none was in
Jerusalem; we have a house in Bethlehem, the river Jordan, under a fig tree,
and at a village wedding in Cana.

I was once told that during the war (WW2), the road signs were
removed or made deliberately misleading in the hopes that the enemy would get lost if we were invaded.

We all need
help in finding the right way - even if we use sat navs these days.

John doesn’t use
the term ‘miracles’ - he uses ‘signs’ - chosen especially to be like signposts
on a journey which will help us to discover who Jesus really is.

So at the end of our Gospel reading we heard:
“Jesus did this, the first of his
signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed
in him”. [John 2:11]

These signs
eventually lead us to words near the end of this Gospel: - “that we may come to believe
that Jesus is the Son of God and that through believing we may have life in his
name”. [John 20:30-31]

How does this
story help us to begin this journey?What do we see on this ‘first’ signpost?

To me, the clue
is in the word ‘first’.It’s the same
word John uses for ‘beginning’ in the first words of the Gospel.It’s the word from which we get ‘archetype’
in English.So this story is about the
‘basic/primary’ sign John uses to set us off on our journey to discover who
Jesus is [the Messiah].

What is this
primary sign?

Jesus is in the
‘transformation business’.

In the custom of
the time, the wedding would be a large community affair.The whole village would be involved. It was
the village Nathanael came from.Jesus
mother was there and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited.

The family on the
verge of social disaster.It was a
disgrace not to have enough wine. The family would always live with the shame
of it.

He changed water
into wine - and not into any old plonk when the guests had already had too much
to drink.It was the best wine possible.
There more than enough of it and the water jars couldn’t have held any more.

Jesus’ presence
still changes lives.He transforms our
lives.He does it to the full. God
doesn’t scrimp on grace.He transforms
lives on the edge of disaster and good lives into even better ones.

I think that,
when we’ve grown up in the church, we sometimes forget this.Just try to imagine what your own life would
be like without the presence of Jesus in it.

At a deeper
level, this sign points us to the heavenly feast prepared for God’s people -
often described as a wedding feast with the church as Jesus’ bride.Communion is sometimes described as being a
foretaste of this banquet.Is this how
we think about it?

The water jars -
used for ‘Jewish rites of purification’ - washing feet on arrival and for hand
washing before and during eating - are a sign that God is doing something new
from within the Jewish system.Jesus
brings cleansing and transformation not only to the Jews but to the rest of the
world.

At a baptism
service when the child is given a lighted candle we say: ‘Shine as a light in
the world to the glory of God the Father’.

So here are some questions for us, today:

Where are the
places WE expect to see Jesus’ glory?

Do we recognise
the transformation Jesus continually brings to our own lives.